A few teachers took a day trip out to Little World: Museum of Man today, an anthropological exhibition in Aichi Prefecture, which is about an hour away by car. Little World is pretty much what it says it is, a park with around 30 traditional houses, flowers and ornaments from 22 different countries around the world. Apparently, the buildings were literally transported and then rebuilt on-site. Not only can you look around them, but there are authentic foods and restaurants offering local cuisine, as well as the opportunity to dress up in each country’s clothes.

Before we headed on our world tour, stopped off at the acrobatics ampitheatre, which had a number of Eastern European acrobats performing amazing stunts. One example; a man juggling, while balancing a pole on his forehead, while a woman did a handstand on top of it, while he was on a unicycle. This is the kind of act where I wonder how they ever found out they could do it. Who wakes up in the morning and says, “I know, today I’ll try…”. We were pretty hungry after the show, so headed to India, where we ate curry and nan-bread, and drank Kingfisher beer. The girls dressed up in saris, and the boys… didn’t. We looked around the little shop, buying real curry powder and some Indian jewellery.

Little World had installations from loads of countries, from Thailand to Burkini Faso and Germany to Micronesia. Each one was recognisably different and the whole thing was set in parkland which showed that Japan really does have at least some space, and that they knew not to overfill it. Here, for the first time since the BBQ a few months ago, I genuinely felt relaxed and not claustrophobic. Japan’s lack of space is something that I’ve never really got used to, despite living in a major city back home.

Further into the park, we came across Old Europe, Germany, France and Italy. Germany offered a chance to dress up in lederhosen, which just couldn’t be ignored. The embarrasment was mitigated by real German beers and wines. Luckily the park was pretty empty today, especially after all the school trips had gone home, so there weren’t many people around to witness the gaijin fashion parade.

On the return route, we stopped by Peruvian villas, Navaho sites, Alaskan cabins and Hawaiin huts, finally ending up at the entrance about 30 minutes after the site had closed! To cap a great day, we went out for Chinese later on just to keep the international theme going. Special thanks to Mayumi who succeeded in driving us there and back in record time with minimal incident!